Having what it takes to secede
IN DECEMBER 2019, an island and a collection of islets in the Solomon Sea voted to secede from the state of Papua New Guinea some 400 miles away. When the result was announced after two weeks of voting in remote communities, crowds burst into song. The margin — 98 per cent had opted to leave.
The story in brief: the island was inhabited by Melanesians for millennia. It became a whaling station for British and Americans, before being colonised by the Germans. An Anglo-German agreement in 1886 separated Bougainville, which is culturally and geographically a part of the Solomon Islands, lumping it with a diverse set of islands and cultures that would become the state of Papua New Guinea (PNG) in 1975.
This led to a war that lasted for the entire 1990s, in which an estimated 20,000 people — a tenth of the population — were killed. The capital, Arawa, was destroyed, as was much of the islands’ infrastructure. An entire generation grew up in the context of war and without formal education.
The PNG hired a British private military firm, Sandline, to keep the rebels at bay, leading to an international scandal. With both sides ground down, a peace agreement brokered by New Zealand was finally signed in 2001. This included a pledge to hold a referendum within two decades. Why, after so much bloodshed, was the final stage achieved so peacefully? Part of the answer is exhaustion. The other is pressure from outside. Australia and the other regional powers told the PNG to let go.
Formal negotiations on the manner of the separation have yet to begin. The referendum was “non-binding”, and there are fears that the PNG government might drag out the consultation process yet further. But the change, it seems, will eventually
